Thank you for "seeking" KateKimmer - hope you "found" or will soon. Anyway you are doing well to keep going to Communion even when your spirit didn't dance. Duty and obedience are holy too!

You have my permission ;-) to get your chin up and give yourself a pat on the back for the very adult virtue of "doing what you are supposed to do - even when it doesn't come with instant gratification."

Just a quick thought here: Feelings aren't facts. And if I lived my life based on my feelings, the streets would be littered with bodies, at least sometime!

However, the very fact that I receive Our Lord in the Eucharist gives my soul grace, regardless of whether I feel particularly grace-filled on any given occasion. I'm receiving Holy Communion to honor Him and to try to unite myself with Him. Sometimes He grants me some consolations, frequently I don't "feel" anything in particular, but take comfort in gratitude for the undeniable fact that He chooses to give Himself to all of us in this special way.

It's up to Him whether He chooses to give me any consolations on any particular occasion. Personally, I don't try to stimulate the experience. He will do so if He chooses, and He thinks it's necessary for the good of my soul at that particular time.

I would say, then, that devotion does not consist in conscious sweetness and tender consolations, which move one to sighs and tears, and bring about a kind of agreeable, acceptable sense of self-satisfaction. No, my child ,this is not one and the same as devotion, for you will find many persons who do experience these consolations, yet who, nevertheless, are evilminded, and consequently are devoid of all true Love of God, still more of all true devotion.

And C.S. Lewis once said that

Quote:

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

The point of all that is that sweet, happy feelings about God can be good and helpful, but they can also be deceitful and mask other problems in our lives - problems of action and behavior.

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"We have seen the true light; we have received the heavenly Spirit; we have found the true Faith, worshiping the undivided Trinity Who has saved us."